For No Amount of Money

[rowyn]

So the lawn service I called on Friday night, Lawn Love Lawn Care, showed up on Monday night. The guy called me at 4:50 to tell me he'd be at the property in 10 minutes. I called him back at 5:30 (I do not get home until 7ish, generally) to ask what the cost would be. He couldn't give me a quote, he said. He talked to the office and they would call me later with a quote.

At 6:30, the office left an automated voicemail (the phone did not ring) saying that they'd emailed me a quote. They had not emailed me a quote. At 7PM, I called the office to ask what was going on. "Uh, we can't give you a quote yet, we have to transfer you to another service with different equipment, we'll get back to you ... later."

"Later when?"

"Well, you're scheduled for Wednesday?"

"..."

It's now Wednesday night and guess who has never gotten back to me. I don't know why "no" is so hard for businesses and "string you along until you are pissed off and furious and determined to badmouth them publicly" is so easy, but that's where we are. Lawn Love Lawn Care: NOT RECOMMENDED. Like, seriously, if you're not gonna do it just freaking SAY NO. Don't tell me you sent me a quote when you didn't. Don't tell me you'll get back to me when you won't. SAY NO. It's not THAT HARD.

Anyway, I give up. I will figure out how the riding lawn mower works and spend however long it takes getting the yard under control again and just see hardly anything of Lut and generally kill myself, because it's easier than wasting an unknown number of weeks looking for the mythical person who is willing to take my money and do it. Because hey, it's Wednesday, and even if I call someone tonight the earliest I will get a "we've looked at your property and will maybe contact you someday, who knows, about how much we would charge to do it on some other day but definitely not any time soon" is next Monday.

x_x

UPDATE:

In a triumph of hope over experience, I decided to call one more service, mostly because I am too upset to relax and I know I'm not going to have time to dent the horror that is my yard until the weekend anyway. Third service says they will come tomorrow and give me a quote.

And Lawn Love just texted me that they were "running late and would be there in the morning" which ... makes no sense? They still haven't told me what they'll charge, why do they need to send someone out AGAIN without giving me a quote? o_O

UPDATE 2:
So now Lawn Love is like "I'm a different person and I need to see it myself to give me a quote" so I guess they're a kind of crappy collective that doesn't trust each other enough to share pricing? Supposedly this one will actually give me a quote. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Comments

[3rdragon]

Your neighborhood is weird, is all I'm going to say. This is not a failure mode I'm familiar with, at least not for straightforward manual labor tasks that require effort but not significant skill.

[rowyn]

Yeah, I got nothin'. -_-

[archangelbeth]

...you might get more reliable with a neighborhood kid with a weed whacker, at this rate. Yeesh!

good luck...

[terrycloth]

And it's THAT bad after only two months? I'm pretty sure we let our lawn go for that long sometimes and it was still just a normal mowing job.

Do they have variable pricing?

[(Anonymous)]

The pricing model that I'm used to is a large charge to do one time tasks like accumulated weeding and trimming bushes followed by a recurring fee for simple mowing.

Is it possible that they are trying to give you a single recurring quote without the one time fee? That would explain why you need to be there -- they need to market to you and decide if they were successful to figure out how many visits to amortize the machete work over.

This isn't quite as stupid a failure mode as it sounds like if many of their clients would be scared off by a first bill that was 4-5 times the recurring amount. Since you probably wouldn't be, you might want to ask for two quotes: setup and recurring.

Telnar

Re: Do they have variable pricing?

[rowyn]

No, purportedly they are trying to give me a one-time fee quote. Lawn Love already gave me a recurring quote based on the property size. Also, no one has asked me to be present when they come.

[rowyn]

Honestly, the overgrown bushes are super-annoying and would take me longer to deal with than the mowing. But the riding mower we have has handled grass this high in the past. Apparently commercial grade ones are less robust somehow? I dunno.

[rowyn]

Ha.

[tagryn]

If you're not having luck with a yellow pages-level company, which might be using subcontractors which makes it easier to fall through the cracks, another place to consider is looking in the "services" section in your local Craigslist. Odds are you're more likely to find a local person who might be more reliable/consistent than an incorporated lawn care company (who are sometimes more interested in stuff like selling fertilizer service than just doing cutting). Just another route to think about.

[tuftears]

Just, yeeesh.

You might have better luck asking your neighbors who they use for their lawn services.

Sadly typical for contractor-type work.

[(Anonymous)]

Kagetsume here,

This is sadly similar to BoingDragon's experience in trying to get an electrician to replace her main service box (the old one was 40 years old and failing). Four different companies, some who said they'd mail a quote and never did, etc. It was unreal how hard it was to pin down a contractor and how incredibly unreliable so many are.

Now more than ever I am glad I just do most things myself; it may take more of my freetime, but at least I know it'll get done.